The Iron Woman Part 35

At first, when David opened his closed Door and looked in, there had been the shock again. He was stunned with incredulous astonishment. Then his mind cleared. With the clearing came once more that organic anger of the robbed man; an anger that has in it the uncontrollable impulse to regain his property. It could not be--this thing that had happened. It should not be!

He would see her; he would take her. As for _him_--David's sinewy fingers closed as talons might close into the living flesh of a man's neck. He knew the l.u.s.t of murder, and he exulted in it. Yet even as he exulted, the baseness of what Blair had done was so astounding, that, sitting there in the dreary room, his hands clenched in his pockets, his legs stretched out in front of him, David Richie actually felt a sort of impersonal amazement that had nothing to do with anger. For one instant the unbelievableness of Blair's dishonor threw him back into that clamoring confusion from which he had escaped since he opened the Door. Blair must have been in love with her! Had Elizabeth suspected it? She certainly had never hinted it to him; why not?

Some girlish delicacy? But Blair--Blair, a dishonorable man? In the confounding turmoil of this uprooting of old admirations, he was conscious of the hand-organ down in the alley, pounding out its imbecile refrain. He even found himself repeating the meaningless words:

"In ancient days there lived a Turk, A horrid beast within the East, ......

Oh, Kafoozleum, Kafoozleum"--

His mind righted itself; he came back to facts, and to the simple incisive question: what must he do? It was not until the afternoon that, by one tortuous and torturing line of reasoning after another, he came to know that, as her uncle had said, for the present he could do nothing.

"Nothing?" At first, David had laughed savagely; he would turn the world upside down before he would leave her in her misery!

For that she was in misery he never doubted; nor did he stop to ask himself whether she had repented her madness, he only groaned. He saw, or thought he saw, the whole thing. There was not one doubt, not one poisonous suspicion of Elizabeth herself.

That she was disloyal to him never entered his head. To David she was only in a terrible trap, from which, at any cost, she must be rescued. That her own mad temper had brought her to such a pa.s.s was neither here nor there; it had nothing to do with the matter in hand, namely her rescue--and then the killing of the man who had trapped her! It came into David's head--like a lamp moving toward him through a mist--that perhaps she had written to him?

He had not really grasped the idea when Robert Ferguson suggested it; but now he was suddenly certain that a letter must be awaiting him in Philadelphia! Perhaps in it she called on him to come and help her? The thought was like a whip. He forgot his desire to kill Blair; he leaped to his feet, fumbling in his pocket for a time-table; then realized that there was no train across the mountains until night. Should he telegraph his mother to open any letter from Elizabeth, and wire him where she was?

No; even in the whirl of his perplexity, he knew he could not let any other eyes than his own see what, in her abas.e.m.e.nt, Elizabeth must have written. He began to pace frantically up and down; then stood and looked out of the window, beating his mind back to calmness,--for he must be calm. He must think what could be done.

He would get the letter as soon as he reached home; until he got it and learned where she was, the only thing to do was to decide how she should be saved.

And so it was that, not allowing himself to dip down into that elemental rage of the wronged man, not even daring to think of his own incredible blunder which had kindled her crazy anger, still less venturing to let his thought rest on the suffering that had come to her, he kept his mind steadily on that one imperative question: _what was to be done?_ At first the situation seemed almost simple: she must leave Blair instantly.

"To-day!" he said to himself, striking the rickety table before him with his fist; "to-day!" Next, the marriage must be annulled.

That was all; annulled! These were the premises from which he started. All that long, dark morning, well into the afternoon, he followed blind alleys of thought, ending always in the same _impa.s.se_--there was nothing he could do. He did not even know where she was, until the letter in Philadelphia should tell him,--at that thought he looked at his watch again. Oh, how many endless hours before he could go and get that letter! And after all, she was Blair Maitland's wife. Suppose she did leave him, would the swine give her her freedom? Not without long, involved processes of law; he knew his man well enough to know that. Yes, there would have to be dreadful publicity, heart-breaking humiliation for his poor, mad darling. She would have to face those things. Oh, if he only knew where she was, so that he could go that moment and help her to take that first step of flight.

She must go at once to his mother. Yes, his mother would shelter her from the beast. If he could only get word to her, to go, _instantly_, to his mother. But he did not know where she was! He cursed himself for not having taken the ten o'clock express! He could have been at home that night, had her letter, and started out again to go to her. As it was, nothing could be done until to-morrow morning. Then he would know what to do, because then he would know where she was. But meantime-- meantime...

There is no doubt that when the frantic man realized his befogging ignorance, and found himself involved in this dreadful delay, the hotel clerk's apprehensions were, at least for wild moments, justified. But only for moments--Elizabeth was to be rescued! David could not consider escape from his own misery until that task had been accomplished. Yet consider: his girl, his woman--another man's; and he helpless! And suppose he did rescue her; suppose he did drag her from the arms of the thief who had been his friend--could it ever be the same? Never. Never.

Never. His Elizabeth was dead. The woman whom he meant to have yet--somehow, sometime, somewhere; the woman whom Blair Maitland had filched from him, was not his Elizabeth. The rose, trampled in the mire, may be lifted, it may be revived, it may be fragrant--but it has known the mire!

There were, in the early darkening afternoon, crazy moments for David Richie. Moments of murderous hate of Blair, moments of unbearable consciousness of his own responsibility, moments of almost repulsion for the tragic, marred creature he loved; and at this last appalling revelation to himself of his own possibilities--moments of absolute despair. And when one of those despairing moments came, he put his head down on the table, on his folded arms, and cried for his mother. He cried hard, like a child: "Materna!"

And so it was that he arose and went to his mother.

CHAPTER XXII

When, after his interview with David, Robert Ferguson went into Mrs. Maitland's office at the Works, he looked older by twenty years than when he had left it the night before. Sarah Maitland, sitting at her desk, heard his step, and wheeled round to greet him.

"Better shut that door," she said briefly; and he gave the door in the gla.s.s part.i.tion a shove with his foot. Then they looked at each other. "Well," she said; and stretched out her hand. "We're in the same box. I guess we'd better shake hands." She grinned with pain, but she forced her grunt of a laugh. "What's your story? Mine is only his explanation to Nannie."

"Mine isn't even that. She merely wrote me she had married him; that was all. Miss White told me what he wrote to Nannie. What do you know about it?"

"That's all I know," she said, and gave him Blair's note.

He read it, and handed it back in silence.

"Well, what are you going to do?" she asked.

"Do? There's nothing to do. I'm done with her!"

"He's my son," Sarah Maitland said. "I have got to do something."

"But there's nothing to be done," he pointed out; it was not like this ruthless woman to waste time crying over spilt milk. "They are both of age, and they are married; that's all there is to it.

I went into the mayor's office and found the registry. The marriage is all right so far as that goes. As for David--men don't go out with a gun or a horsewhip in these fine times. He won't do anything. For that matter, he is well rid of her. I told him so. I might have added that the best thing a jilted man can do is to go down on his knees and thank G.o.d that he's been jilted; I know what I'm talking about! As for your son--" he stopped.

"Yes," she said, "_my son?_" And even in his fury, Robert Ferguson felt a pang at the sight of her torn and ravaged face that quivered so that he turned his eyes away out of sheer decency. "I must do something for my son. And I think I know what it will be." She bit her forefinger, frowning with thought. "I think I know ... I have not done right by Blair."

"No, you haven't," he said dryly. "Have you just discovered that?

But I don't see what you or I or G.o.d Almighty can do _now_!

They're married."

"Oh, I can't do anything about this marriage," she said, with a gesture of indifference; "but that's not the important thing."

"Not important? What do you mean?"

"I mean that the important thing is to know what made Blair behave in this way; and then cure him."

"Cure him! There's no cure for rottenness." He was so beside himself with pain that he forgot that she was a woman, and Blair's mother.

"I blame myself for Blair's conduct," she said.

"Oh, Elizabeth is as bad as he is!" But he waited for her contradiction.

It did not come. "Probably worse." Involuntarily he raised a protesting hand.

"But I mean to forgive her," said Sarah Maitland, with cold determination.

"Forgive Elizabeth?" he said, angrily, and his anger was the very small end of the wedge of his own forgiveness; "forgive _her_? It strikes me the boot is on the other leg, Mrs.

Maitland."

"Oh, well," she said, "what difference does it make? I guess it's a case of the pot and the kettle. I'm not blaming your girl overmuch; although a bad woman is always worse than a bad man. In this case, Elizabeth acted from hate, and Blair from love; the result is the same, of course, but one motive is worse than the other. But never mind that--Blair has got her, and he will be faithful to her; for a while, anyhow. And Elizabeth will get used to him--that's Nature, and Nature is bigger than a girl's first fancy. So if David doesn't interfere--you think he won't? you don't know human nature, Friend Ferguson! David isn't a saint--at least I hope he isn't; I don't care much about twenty-seven-year- old male saints. David may not be able to interfere, but he'll try to, somehow. You wait! As for Blair, as I say, if David doesn't put his finger in the pie, Blair isn't hopeless."

"I'm glad you think so."

"I _do_ think so. Blair is young yet; and if she costs him something, he may value her--and I think I can manage to make her cost him something! A man doesn't value what comes cheap; and all his life everything has come cheap to Blair."

"I don't see what you're driving at."

"Just this," she explained; "Blair has had everything he wanted,-- oh, yes, yes; it's my fault!" she struck an impatient fist upon the arm of her chair. "I told you it was my fault. Don't take precious time to argue over that. It is _all_ my fault.

There! will that satisfy you? I've given him everything. So he thought he could have everything. He doesn't know the meaning of 'no.' He has got to learn. I shall teach him. I have thought it all out. I'm going to make a man of him."

"How?" said Robert Ferguson.

"I haven't got the details clear in my mind yet, but this is the gist of it: _NO money but what he earns_."

"No money?"

"After this, it will be 'root, hog, or die.'"

"But Blair can't root," her superintendent said, fair in spite of himself. And at that her face lighted with a sort of awful purpose.